I had left my bedding at the Hot Springs Hotel, and returning to get it
staid there all night. Early next morning (Friday, November 12) we
crossed Harrison Lake, in a drenching rain, to the foot of a high
mountain, about two miles from the springs, on which Pean, Captain
George, and other Indians said there were plenty of goats. We beached
our canoe, and made up packs for the climb up the mountain. The outfit
consisted of our guns, my sleeping-bag, Pean's gun and blankets, a few
sea biscuits, a piece of bacon, and some salt.
My sleeping-bag was wrapped up in a piece of canvas, and when I handed
it to Pean, he commenced to unroll it to put his blankets in with it,
but I objected. Visions of the insects with which I knew his bedding was
inhabited rose up before me. I thought of the rotary drill, key-hole
saw, and suction pump with which they are said to be armed, and I did
not want any of them in my bag. So I unrolled the canvas only a part of
its length, laid his blankets in and rolled it up again, hoping the
remaining folds might prevent the vermin from finding their way in, and
my reckoning proved correct. One of his blankets had been white in its
day, but had long since lost its grip on that color, and was now about
as pronounced a brunette as its owner. The other blanket was gray, but
even through this sombre shade, as well as through the rank odor it
emitted, gave evidence that it had not been washed for many years. Pean
brought with him a cotton bedspread that had also once been white, but
left this with the canoe. In my pack I carried the grub, and an extra
coat for use on the mountain, where we expected to encounter colder
weather.
We started up the mountain at ten o'clock in the forenoon. For the first
two miles we skirted its base to the eastward, through dense timber,
crossing several deep, dark jungles and swamps. Then we began the ascent
proper, and as soon as we got up a few hundred feet on the mountain
side, we found numerous fresh deer-signs. We halted to rest, when Pean
took from its case his gun, which up to this time he had kept covered,
and which I naturally supposed to be a good, modern weapon. It proved,
however, an old smooth bore, muzzle-loading, percussion-lock musket, of
.65 calibre, with a barrel about fifty inches long. He drew out the
wiping stick, on the end of which was a wormer, pulled a wad of paper
from the gun and poured a charge of shot out into his hand. This he put
carefully into his shot-bag. Then he took from another pouch a No. 1
buckshot, and dropped it into the muzzle of his musket. It rolled down
onto the powder, when he again inserted the bunch of paper, rammed it
home with the rod, put on a cap, and was loaded for bear, deer, or
whatever else he might encounter. He then replaced the musket in its
sealskin cover as carefully as if it had been a $300 breech-loader.
Nearly all these Indians use just such old muskets, bought from the
Hudson Bay Company, and yet they keep them in covers made of the skin of
the seal, which they kill in the rivers hereabout, or of deer or other
animals. They take excellent care of their guns in this respect, but I
have never seen one of them clean or oil his weapon, and several of them
told me they seldom do so.
My Winchester express, with fancy stock, Lyman sight, etc., was a
curiosity to them. None of them had ever seen anything like it, and one
of them asked me what kind of a rifle it was. When told it was a
Winchester, he said:
"I didn't know Winchester so big like dat. Didn't know he had stock like
dat." He had only seen the little .44 Winchester, with a plain stock,
and innocently supposed it was the only kind made.
Pean and I had a hard day's work toiling up the mountain through fallen
timber, over and around great ledges of jutting rock, across deep,
rugged canyons and gulches, and through dense jungles of underbrush.
About two o'clock in the afternoon we halted, lay down for a rest, and
had been there but a few minutes when I heard the sharp, familiar
chatter of the little pine squirrel. I looked around quickly, expecting
to see one within a few feet of me, but instead saw Pean lying close to
the ground, beckoning to me and pointing excitedly up the game trail in
which we had been walking. Looking through the thick, intervening brush,
I saw two deer, a buck and a doe, looking toward us. They had not seen
nor scented us, but had merely heard the chatter of the little squirrel,
as they supposed, and, though apparently as completely deceived by it as
I had been, they had stopped to listen, as they do at almost every sound
they hear in the woods. But there was no squirrel there. Pean had taken
this method of calling my attention, and had imitated the cry of the
familiar little cone-eater so perfectly that even the deer had been
deceived by it.
I cautiously and slowly drew my rifle to my shoulder, and taking aim at
the breast of the buck, fired. Both deer bounded away into thicker
brush, and were out of sight in an instant. Pean sprang after them, and
in a few minutes I heard the dull, muffled report of his musket. He
shouted to me, and going to him I found the buck dead and the Indian
engaged in butchering it. My bullet had gone a little farther to the
left than I intended, breaking its shoulder, and had passed out through
the ribs on the same side. The deer had fallen after going but a few
yards, but was not quite dead when Pean came up and shot it through the
head. We took out the entrails, cut a choice roast of the meat for our
supper and breakfast, and hurried on our way.
We camped at four o'clock on a small bench of the mountain, and you may
rest assured, gentle reader, that our conversation in front of the camp
fire that night was novel. Pean, you will remember, could not speak half
a dozen words of English. He spoke entirely in Chinook, and I knew but a
few words of that jargon. I had a Chinook dictionary with me, however,
and by its aid was able to pick out the few words necessary in what
little talking I had to do, and to translate enough of Pean's answers to
my questions to get along fairly well. The great trouble with him seemed
to be that he was wound up to talk, and whenever I made a remark or
asked a question in his adopted language he turned loose, and talked
until I shut him off with "Halo kumtucks" (I don't understand). No
matter how often I repeated this he seemed soon to forget it, and would
open on me again whenever he got a cue. He was a fluent talker, and if I
had only been well up in the jargon, I could have got lots of pointers
from him.
The deer of this region is the true black-tail (_Cervus columbianus_),
not the mule-deer (_Cervus macrotis_), that is so often miscalled the
black-tail. The black-tail is smaller than the mule-deer, and its ears,
though not so large as those of the latter, are larger than those of the
Virginia deer (_Cervus virginianus_). Its tail is white underneath, dark
outside, shading to black at the lower end, and while longer than that
of the mule-deer, is not so long as that of the Virginia deer.